First Steps

This page guides you through creating your first lighting setup with Octane Light Studio. By the end, you will have multiple lights organized in a layer with a saved snapshot you can return to at any time.

Starting Octane Light Studio

Open the OLS2.1 tab in the 3D Viewport sidebar and click "Start Octane Light Studio." The addon initializes Octane and prepares your scene for lighting. You only need to do this once per scene. After that, the panel switches to the main interface with four sections: Setups, Create Lights, Layers, and Settings.

Creating Your First Light

Open the Create Lights section. Here you find a Create button, a light type dropdown, emission type toggle buttons (T for Texture, B for BlackBody), and a layer dropdown that determines which layer the light will be added to. Select Area Light from the dropdown — it is the most versatile light type and a great starting point. Before you click Create, select a 3D object in your viewport that you want to illuminate. The light will be created facing that object. If nothing is selected, the light will be placed at the center of the viewport, which usually means  you will have to reposition it manually.

When you click Create, the light is added to the selected layer and the Adjust panel opens automatically. You are immediately ready to fine-tune the position — no intermediate steps, no confirmation dialogs.

The Adjust panel shows eight position preset buttons — BL, L, L45, F, R45, R, BR, B — spatially ordered with Front in the center. Click any preset to jump the light to that angle instantly. The active preset is highlighted blue. Below the presets, sliders let you dial in the exact position. The Rotation slider shows degrees from Front (0° is Front, +90° is Right, -90° is Left), Height shows the elevation angle in degrees, and Distance shows the real 3D distance in meters. You can also adjust Lift, Slide, and Size right here.

Adjusting Your Light

In the Layers section, each light shows an intensity slider and a color picker when the Intensity / Color toggle is enabled in the Layers header. Drag the slider to control brightness, click the color field to change the light color. These are the controls you will use most often.

The Adjust panel is already open after creating a light. For other lights, click the Adjust button to reveal the placement tools, position presets, and gimbal sliders for Rotation, Height, Distance, Lift, Slide, and Size — all updating in real time without entering any modal tool. All sliders show absolute real-world values so you always know exactly where the light is positioned. 

A green beam line shows you exactly where the light is pointing, and a blue dot marks the impact point on your geometry. If the beam turns orange, the light is missing all surfaces and pointing into empty space. A yellow tilt angle label next to the light in the viewport shows the actual pitch in degrees.  

Adding More Lights

To add another light, select your 3D object in the viewport again so the new light knows where to aim. Then go to the Create Lights section, choose the light type and target layer, and click Create. The new light is added to the selected layer and Adjust opens automatically. Use the position presets to quickly place it at a different angle — for example, click L45 for a left-side fill light or BR for a back-right rim light. A typical starting setup uses three lights: a Key light as the main source, a Fill light to soften the shadows, and a Rim light to separate the subject from the background.

Each layer has its own intensity control that acts as a master dimmer for all lights inside it. This lets you balance entire groups of lights with a single slider without losing the relative brightness between individual lights.

Saving a Snapshot

Once you have a lighting setup you like, save it as a snapshot. Click the plus button in the snapshot row above your layer. This captures the complete state of every light — position, intensity, color, and all settings. You can create multiple snapshots to compare different looks and switch between them with a single click.

If you want your snapshots to update automatically as you make changes, go to the Settings section and enable Realtime Snapshots. When turned on, every adjustment is instantly written to the active snapshot. By default, Realtime Snapshots is turned off, which means your snapshots are protected from accidental changes.

You can freely experiment and only commit your changes when you are ready by clicking the update button.

Saving a Setup

To keep your lighting configuration permanently, use the Save Setup button in the Setups section.

This stores your entire scene lighting as a reusable setup with an automatic thumbnail preview. Your setups are  

 saved to disk and available across all your Blender projects — no need to export or import files. You can browse your collection with thumbnail previews and load any setup with a single click.

What's Next

 You now have the foundation. From here, explore the individual tools in detail — interactive Spotclick placement for click-on-surface positioning, position presets and absolute orbit sliders for precise control, edge gradients for professional light falloff, orbit modes for controlling how your light moves around the scene, and light linking to control exactly which objects each light affects. Each of these features has its own dedicated page in this documentation.